The Devil Eats Here (Multi-Author Short Story Collection) (15 page)

“What are you doing?” he whispered loudly.

Isobel picked up the shawl and wrapped it around her.

“You’re not supposed to do that until the last scene,” he remonstrated.

“My brother just walked in,” she explained. Her thumping heart made her voice breathy and faltering. “I’ve got to get out. I don’t think he saw me.”

“What’s he doing here?”

“I don’t know. Where can I dress?” She had changed behind the curtains with the girls, so they didn’t have to walk through the Club. She handed James the blonde wig.

“Upstairs. There’s an empty room. I’ll get Peter to show you. Hold on.” The “handmaidens” watched from the stage.

“Next scene ladies.” He clapped his hands to hurry them. “Jessica, you’re playing Venus.”

“Why can’t Isobel do it?” Jessica drawled.

“She has to go, something important.”

Jessica opened her mouth to argue, but James cut her short. “Now don’t be difficult darling, please. The audience is waiting.”

“I want more money if I’m playing Venus,” she whined.

James sighed. “Very well. Three shillings?”

Jessica clapped her hands. “Of course I’ll do it.”

“Do you remember what to do?”

Jessica pretended to think hard. “I’m behind that box, looking like I’m swimming, and I get really bored, and I stand up and I’m not wearing any clothes.”

“Shakespeare’s wasted on you girl.”

The “handmaidens” slipped out of their white shawls and twined garlands of silk flowers around their bodies. Wax fruit, piled high on wooden platters, represented the fruits of the forest, and two furry toy animals, a lion and a donkey, the wild beasts.

Isobel waited, desperate to leave.

The girls found their places and James slowly opened the curtains. The scene underway, he led Isobel through a side door and out into a narrow dim hallway. A short dark man with a black beard sat on a stool smoking a pipe.

“Peter?” James spoke each word with slow clear care. “Show this lady upstairs. To the big room with wide window, where we stored the clothes. You know?”

“I know. Yes, I take she.” He pointed his pipe at the ceiling.

James twined his arms around Isobel and pulled her close. “Where will you go?”

“Home. I don’t think he saw me.” She kissed his open mouth.

He kissed her back. “Be careful.”

“As always.” She kissed him again.

She followed Peter to the end of the hallway and then up a narrow flight of wooden stairs to the very top of the building.

The chill in the attic room made her shiver. The only light came from the spill of the gas lamp from the alleyway outside. Peter strode across the room to a door on the opposite wall, and pulled it open to reveal a large walk-in closet with the girls’ clothes hanging from a wooden rail.

“Here is,” he indicated.

“Thank you Peter.” She stepped into the closet and prepared to change. Peter stood behind her, watching.

“You’d better go back downstairs,” she prompted. “To guard the door. Yes?”

“Guarding-yes, I go. Goodbye now? Yes?”

“That’s right Peter. Goodbye.”

From the military fantasy novel
Raingun
by John Blackport

Rescuing the hostages had failed. It was time to try something else.

Rick crept down the cliff overlooking the moonlit bay. Flasks of oil clinked in his pack. He extended his right arm for balance and tucked a ceramic jug under his left.

The pirates surely intended escape by sea, which suggested a hidden boat. Bending his knees at a crablike angle, he stayed hidden from the shore below using all the familiar dips and crannies he’d explored as a boy. Rick kept descending. Waves lapped and breezes whistled against the stone surface.

A felucca was beached in the cliffside’s shadow, awaiting the midnight tide. A stout, solitary lookout in tar-soaked leather and a dented iron helmet leaned on the tiller. He faced seaward and didn’t react until Rick’s feet thudded on the wet sand. Rick broke into a lumbering run.

“I’ve got the money!” Rick blurted, waving the jug. “And wine!”

The lookout hesitated.

“By the elements, I drown you in Water.” Rick muttered the incant, then repeated it, casting two Water spells; both struck home. The first broke his target’s Spell-shield with a fizzle of aquamarine.

The lookout prepared a spell of his own. “By Ullon, your — aagh!”

Rick’s second Water had ruined the pirate’s Sting spell. Rick grunted with disgusted outrage at his enemy’s invocation of the god of murder. The lookout fell. Rick ran splashing through the shallows and clambered over the net-covered gunwale, wary of whether the man was faking.

A second pirate rose from a blanket in bleary alarm. His drawn cutlass didn’t shine. He too cast a Sting spell by Ullon, striking Rick full in the chest. Now Rick’s own Spell-shield came into play, absorbing the attack.

Rick charged. Both men tumbled. Rick slammed the pirate’s wrist to the deck, dislodging the cutlass. He lost track of the weapon’s location as they grappled. Rick raised the jug over his own head and bashed it into the bridge of the pirate’s nose.

The second pirate went limp. Rick grabbed the cutlass. He faced each fallen foe, bracing for more attacks. But both opponents lay still, one in a growing puddle of blood. Neither one was panting. Rick’s thighs and back ached with tension. His pulse had yet to slacken when their bodies faded, leaving only tar-hardened, weatherbeaten garb.

“That’s what hitting this town will get you.” Rick spat at the departed, evaluating the cutlass. It was covered with an ominous black film. “Killing our people. Burning our boats. Be sure and tell your shipmates how I killed you both when you raise. Then talk about finding a new place to hit. Because hitting us won’t get you rich. It’ll get you dead. And keep getting you dead till your lives are all gone.” He shivered in nervous triumph.

Rick emptied his flasks. He hauled out bundles of dry sailcloth, spreading them out. He noticed a saddlebag in the compartments, which jingled when he grabbed it. He tossed it off the boat. Rick couldn’t propel its metallic contents very far, but it made the tide’s edge. Swearing at his land legs and shaky hands, he flinted the oil-soaked deck. It wasn’t easy, so when the flame caught he made sure to catch a sail.

Rick leapt overboard into knee-deep, rocky-bottomed brine. Fire roared up. He unfastened the mooring and hid the saddlebag in a gap between two rocks that had always reminded him of a she-wolf and her cub.

On the climb back up, Rick reviewed his plan. He’d spied other pirates hunkered in the mayor’s barn up top. With their escape boat gone, the gang might free their prisoners in exchange for opportunity to flee overland. This slim chance was doubtless the best they’d expect: once caught, Ullonites never escaped execution.

In front of the barn again, Rick assessed the subdued crowd on the lawn outside the mayor’s mansion. The lawn bordered mansion and cliff on opposite sides, with forest on the remaining two points of the compass.

The mayor’s daughter Vivienne was seventeen. Eight years older than she, Rick had arrived in town at age eleven and watched her grow up. Front and center in a plain, spotless white dress, she advanced by cautious inches.

“Anything happen while I was gone?” Rick asked.

“They’ll kill everyone inside if they don’t get the gold.”

“And nobody knows where the gold is?” His question went unanswered. A fragile frown broke through Vivienne’s steady composure. “Any sign of your father?”

“He’s missing,” she despaired. “They must have him in the barn!”

“Wherever he is, I’m through waiting for him. Get back!” Rick waved his hand toward her in an arc, dismissing her to the relative safety of the crowd. He whirled to face the barn doors and spoke in his strongest voice.

“Pirates! Release your prisoners at once. In exchange, we’ll allow you an hour head start before our soldiers start to track you. Whatever your plan was, it failed. Your boat is burning! Check for yourself. Anyone standing at the cliff’s edge can see.”

The crowd fell silent behind him. Rick’s mind teemed with countless possible imminent disasters. He had no soldiers to command, nor did he know where any were. He whispered a prayer to Artifice to make the pirates believe his bluff.

Rick stood riveted at the opening of the barn doors.

Odor of incense drifted out. Rick beheld fourteen silhouettes of figures bristling with blades, jewelry, and spiked piecemeal armor. The pirate crew was backlit by lanterns shedding an eerie crimson glow. Brightness flashed on the straw-covered barn floor, then flit like a miniature bolt of lightning to the brandished knife of a statuesque lady. Her thin-strapped evening gown of pink silk struck Rick as decidedly unpiratical.

Rick scrutinized the pirates. Then he faced the torchlit gathering behind him, of people who had been his neighbors for half his life. Rick read passive, horrified expectation on every face. He could feel the people wanting action, relying on him.

From the erotic novella
Heat Rises
by Alice Gaines

So much for making her job interview. Laura Barber might have been looking at a moonscape rather than a deserted mountain highway. Still shivering, she gazed out the window of the country store as snow advanced from making the pavement disappear to filling in the road completely. The storm had only started half an hour ago. What would this place look like by morning?

“You’re a mighty lucky young lady.” The shopkeeper handed her a Styrofoam cup with steam coming out the top. “If you’d gone off the road any farther from here, you’d still be out in that.”

She took a sip of the coffee and did her best not to grimace at the bitter taste. The man may be right about her luck, but she’d probably ruined her shoes on the trek here. The low-heeled pumps had cost a bundle, and she’d just worn them enough that her feet felt comfortable when she dressed for business.

“Yep,” the man said as he gazed out at the accumulating snow. “Nobody’ll be moving around in these parts for days.”

“Mr…”

“Beaumont.” The man offered a gnarled hand.

“Mr. Beaumont.” She studied him as they shook. The twinkle in his blue eyes suggested more youth than the fringe of white hair did. If you called central casting for a country store owner, they’d probably send someone like this man.

“You’d be in a heap of trouble if you’d broken down farther away,” he said.

“Can someone come out and put me back on the road before things get worse?” she asked.

“You don’t understand storms in these mountains, Miss.”

“Ms.,” she said. “Laura Barber.”

“Well, Ms. Barber, won’t nobody get out of here until the tow trucks come through.”

“When will that be?”

“Days,” he answered. “Probably not a week, though.”

“A week?” Darn it all. She was supposed to be at the bottom of this mountain by evening and at an interview there in the morning. She’d planned carefully to get ahead of this storm, but her plane had landed late. Still, she ought to have been able to make her destination. She’d grown up in Connecticut and had driven in winter weather before. Snow was snow, wasn’t it? Apparently not.

“What am I going to do?” she said. “I can’t stay here for days.”

“That you can’t. I’ll be closing myself and heading home in a few minutes.”

“Is there a motel nearby?” she asked.

“Nope. We’ll have to find a family to put you up.”

“I can’t impose on strangers for days.”

He shrugged. “Don’t see that you have much choice.”

Wonderful. Not only would she not make it to her interview, but she’d have to spend days with people she didn’t know. She managed well enough in business situations where procedures and rules of engagement were clearly laid out. In someone’s home, she’d have to interact. She probably couldn’t disappear behind her laptop without appearing rude.

“Unless…” Mr. Beaumont said. “Your solution might be pulling up right now.”

Headlights shone outside--bright enough to blind her for a moment. A huge SUV or pickup, engine at a low roar. The motor shut off, and the lights went dim. A man climbed out and headed into the store. A blast of cold air whooshed through the front as he entered. “Hey, Phil.”

Mr. Beaumont shuffled off. “Hey, you young pup. What are you doing out in weather like this?”

“Business down in the city. Thought I could outrun the storm.”

The voice tugged at her memory. Low and dark. She knew it, although she hadn’t heard it recently enough to place it in her brain. Something about the tone registered in her body.

She glanced over at the counter where he stood, his back to her. Tall and broad-shouldered, he commanded the space around him. She had a physical memory of that, too, enough to warm her skin. Whoever this was, she’d do best to avoid him. But how?

“Good thing you’re here,” Mr. Beaumont said, gesturing toward her. “This lady is going to need a ride somewhere.”

The man turned, and all the memory nudges turned into one huge sucker-punch. Ethan Gould. Good Lord, not him. It had to be five years…no, six. That night at the party. After three years of fantasies about the handsome guy who always sat at the front of the class, she’d decided to at least try to find out if the attraction had gone both ways. Tequila fortification, too much, had led to humiliation. Oh, God, all the things she’d said to him. Her stomach sank remembering them after all this time.

Other than that, they’d almost never interacted all through business school. He’d have forgotten her by now. Women probably came onto him all the time--women more remarkable than her. He wouldn’t remember. Please God, don’t let him remember.

Sure enough, he smiled at her as he would at any stranger. A genial expression he used so easily. The famed Gould charm would come next. So potent, it even worked on men. On women…well, forget trying to resist it.

After a moment, his brows knitted together. “Do we know each other?”

“No…I don’t think…haven‘t met,” she said. Damn it all, how could he force this reaction from her after so much time? She’d actually lie about her identity if she could get away with it. She’d avoided him successfully since that horrible night. She’d actually followed his career so she’d know where he was. He couldn’t have just happened on her on a snowy mountain, and yet, here he stood, as tempting and as terrifying as he’d been at that party.